Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Wired rating

Wired

Tired

Price

£249 without a contract

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is the Finnish company's first touch-enabled phone, and along with its touch technology come the inevitable comparisons with Cupertino's finest.

And here they are: the Nokia model has a better camera, (3.2 megapixels with a dual-LED flash and Carl Zeiss lens), is lighter and easier to hold, and it comes with a year of free music. The 5800, known bizarrely as the Tube, also packs in video messaging, picture messaging, video calling, support for Flash and, yes, cut and paste.

However, the iPhone still pips Nokia for its interface.

Don’t get me wrong, the 5800 is a landmark in Nokia's history. It is feature rich, offering everything that we love in company's models and more. The design is simple and uncluttered – a candy bar phone with three buttons at the base of the screen, which means you don't have to fiddle with the screen to accept a call.

Another nice touch is the proximity sensor, which deactivates the touch technology when you are chatting on the phone, as well as the screen-lock slider on the side of the phone, which stops you making calls from your pocket.

Onto the interface and you have the option of finger touch, using the (bendy) stylus or the plectrum (eh?). The home page comes up with your fave four friends but hitting the menu button brings up more options. In a nod to the 5800's target audience of musicos, a media bar pops up if you hit the touch-sensitive Xpress Music button above the screen.

Scrolling is easy, although it takes one click to highlight an option and then another to activate it.

There are four input options for typing – a virtual alphanumeric keypad, a mini-qwerty keyboard, a full-screen, landscape qwerty keyboard and then handwriting recognition too (boo sucks iPhone). Switching between portrait and landscape can be a little sluggish.

So what's the problem? It's just not funky. The 5800 features a version of the widely-used S60 operating system interface updated for touch. It's functional and easy to navigate, but it lacks the wow factor. It's the first one, though, and with the next model, Nokia could well have an Apple crusher.